David Ohle - The Pisstown Chaos

Feeling a surge of energy from the willy, Mildred and Jacob pedaled effortlessly. The car's wheels spun in the dirt as it rolled on at a fast rate and headed up the only hill in the camp.

"This willy isn't bad," Mildred said.

"See, I told you."

"They've improved it a lot."

"It gives me ideas," Jacob said, "I'll trap imps. We'll eat the meat and make hats from the fur. We can sell those and turn a few bucks." He glanced out the window once the hill had been topped and they were gliding down.

Mildred watched a nighthawk streak across the face of the moon, dipping and turning in pursuit of mayflies. "It's a beautiful night. My blisters don't itch any more, and I love the way the moonlight dances over the trailer roofs."

"I feel alive. Full of hope," Jacob burbled.

"Same here," Mildred said. "Resisting it wasn't worth the trouble."

After three or four wrong turns, they located trailer 8080802, which was set far apart from the others at the very edge of the camp, standing against a perimeter fence made of concrete and steel and topped with broken glass. The trailer had been lifted onto concrete piers that were out of level, so that it leaned downward in one rear corner. The few trees that survived in the area were in decline, their foliage tinged with a dry, brown fungus.

A few feet away from the trailer, bees and flies swarmed around a small metal privy, entering and leaving through a vent in the roof. Beside the privy, covered with a canvas tarp were sacks of lime and a small shovel.

"I'm surprised we have no neighbors," Mildred said. "You can't see any other trailers from here." She walked around 8080802, noting the broken jalousie windows and the tattered curtains behind them. She picked up a stick and knocked down a few of the mud-dauber nests that were plastered on the shady underside of the back window awning. The steel drum mounted on the roof to catch rainwater worried her. It dripped from several small rust holes.

Jacob got on his knees and pulled a crate of gel cans from under the trailer. "Okay, we got a shitter, we got lime, we got water up there on the roof, and we got enough gel to last awhile. So far, so good." He entered the trailer to have a look.

Mildred stood near an open jalousie. "How is it in there?"

"It's hot as blazes and it stinks."

The mattress in the bedroom was speckled with yellow mold and sagged under a mat of hair. "Looks like imps been living in here," he shouted.

A jar of dried urpflanz graced the top of a bedside table. A drawer was full of candles and matches. The pellet stove had seen long-term use and was in considerable disrepair. "I can fix that," Jacob said, "but there's no pellets around. We're gonna freeze come winter."

Mildred entered the trailer warily, her hands in the air, careful not to touch any of the dusty, oily surfaces all around her. Something was spattered above the sink, an old stain, years old. It was dark red, almost black, and could have been blood.

Jacob took her hands. "How's about a little smack, honey? Right on the kisser."

No, not yet. No mating yet. It's almost curfew anyway."

Shortly before ten, when a merciful breeze swept hot air out of the trailer and made it habitable for the night, Mildred and Jacob fell into effortless, willy-deep sleep on the dirty mattress.

The well-known Doolittle girl has made the news again. Her mother recently attested that the child's progress was not typical. In her first year the deep-set eyes grew dark and animal-like, and she was never known to sleep or cry. Whenever she opened her mouth and let her tongue slither forth, she was fed starch bars. During the long summer days she lay quietly cool in her basement room, staring restfully at a radiating water stain on the pulp-board ceiling. At intervals this state of semi-awareness would lapse, her head would turn into her sour pillow, and a white foam would spill from her open mouth and rapidly harden as it ran down her throat and onto her quilt.

One sultry wet night, Daisy Doolittle came up from the basement, stood there briefly said something inaudible to her mother, and left the house. She took a pedal bus to Pisstown, rented a room in a downtown guest house, and placed an ad in the evening edition of the City Moon seeking a suitable mate.

The American ship, Amber Princess, collided with a barge delivering stinkers to the waiting camp at Indian Apple. As a result of this collision, three hundred and ninety stinkers were thrown into the icy Bum Bay Straits. The Reverend's Guards were not informed and therefore took no action. Ten days after the incident, a storm swept through the Straits, scattering the floating stinkers widely Because of clockwise currents in those waters, some of them washed up on the shores of Square Island. Water-logged and slightly frozen, they were taken to the Templex and given strong doses of willy. Soon they were put to hard labor in the Reverend's mining operation there.

The Reverend's brother, Wallace, barged into the Office of Patents and Subventions, bringing something smelly in the sleeve of a newspaper, which turned out to be a pickled imp's foot on the end of a stick. He said the device was designed for use in determining the best plank-spacing in the floor of an imp cage and that he was exploring the notion of raising anemic imps for use in parasite research. Further inquiries were discouraged and the patent denied.

The Home Guard reports that a houseboat was found grounded in the National Canal which has been at low water lately. There were no lights on its deck, nor any outward signs of habitation. It was a practical box cottage, nicely finished, built atop a barge. The shiplap siding was newly painted and the windows caulked. A plaque above the entry door read, "Pisstown or Bust. "

When Guards jimmied the door and went into the parlor, a grisly sight awaited them. It was a family of laststage stinkers, all burst open at the abdomen. The father reclined in a natural attitude on the davenport, the mother sat erect in a wingback chair, an infant lay on the floor in a sea of rags. The Guards report that parasites covered almost every surface in the room. There were so many on the davenport, it seemed alive.

On entering the parasite facility at Permanganate Island, those in the first stage of infestation were segregated from other prisoners and taken by pedal bus to a staging area where, in the stifling heat of a metal Quonset hut, an older Mildred Vink, now Mildred Balls, and a few other victims were checked in. Diagnostic specimens of stool, blood, urine, semen, and hair were taken, and questions asked. "What is the name and address of the last person with whom you've made lip-to-lip contact, and when did that occur?"

"My late husband, Jacob," Mildred said, "about two or three years ago, as many as five. I don't remember."

"Jacob Balls, the brewmeister?" asked an Administration official who overheard her answer. "Didn't he invent Jake powder?"

"Yes, that's true. Before we met."

"I hated the way it tasted in the beginning, in the early days, and the way it smelled, too. I had to hold my nose when I drank it."

A few batches were bad. There were manpower shortages during the last Chaos. Mistakes were made."

"Well, Mrs. Balls, here's hoping we can lick your parasites before you stiffen up. They tell me the stiffening feels like you've got one foot in the grave and one foot out. But I guess the Reverend said it best when he said, 'We die that we may die no more.' Once you're over it, you don't have to go through it again."

"Brilliant," Mildred said, and the official moved on.

The questions resumed: "Have you committed to memory the Reverend's Field Guide to the Satisfied Life?"

"No. I'm not a Hookerite."

"What are you, then?"